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UPCOMING HOME TOURS

Rice Design Alliance Architecture Tour "Additionally," March 29 and 30, 1-6 p.m. Tour is only open to RDA members, membership is $45 and includes one ticket, additional tickets for guests $15-$25, ricedesignalliance.org

There's always a certain mystery about what goes on inside other people's houses. That's part of the thrill of the home tours that pop up around Houston every spring.

Behind the unassuming craftsman façade of Erik Hardenbol and Rachel Nystrom's Audubon Place bungalow, for example, there's an interior that would shock their neighbors: It's contemporary.

Yes, Hardenbol and Nystrom love their Montrose-area home's unusual keyhole arches, the brick fireplace and the original wood floors, but they've married them with sleek-lined furnishings and light fixtures.

"We live in this great old house, so we asked ourselves, 'How can we make it comfortable and modern at the same time?' " said Nystrom.

After making over the kitchen and bathroom, the couple still were short on space but the airplane-style layout didn't offer many options for expanding the structure while remaining true to the home's original craftsman design, leading the couple to look for external solutions.

"The backyard was basically just grass and a carport, so there was a lot of potential to get rid of everything there and make it a yard that we would actually enjoy spending time in," said Nystrom.

Architects Mark Wamble and Dawn Finley of Interloop Architecture were hired to design a rear addition with an entirely different look.

"We feel like an addition can be compatible with an existing building without trying to look like it," said Wamble. "We weren't concerned stylistically with looking like the original house, which is unique in its own right. We took cues from the continuity between old and new but we didn't want to ape something from the 1920s."

The main focus is a contemporary two-story structure with dual spaces that each perform double duty. The garage on the first floor, in addition to housing Erik's red 1994 Alfa Romeo Spider, includes a fridge, a work bench that doubles as an island and barn-style double doors that open out to create a flowing indoor/outdoor entertaining area. The upstairs apartment is predominantly used as a yoga studio by the couple, who are dedicated ashtanga yoga practitioners, but when guests arrive the white lacquered walls pop open to reveal clever custom storage space and a murphy bed.

With a minimalist interior, the focus of the new structure is a unique exterior "screen" of Brazilian ipe wood slats that wrap around the second-floor space from the garage, the stairs and each side of the glass-walled studio. Wamble and Finley used randomized, computer-generated scripts to vary the pattern of the slats, with a higher density on the screen on the sides of the studio that face adjacent properties for greater privacy.

"From inside, the space the screen sort of fades away, but you know it's there so you feel cozy," said Nystrom. "It's really quite beautiful in the studio when sun comes in at sunrise or sunset."

Interloop's design also included an elevated terrace attached to the back of the house that aesthetically pulls together the two structures, as well as a lush garden and pondlike pool.

"My husband wanted a pool but I don't really like the way pools look, so I told them I need to see renderings of a pool that doesn't look like a pool," said Nystrom. "People come over and they think it's a koi pond."

The Nystrom home will be included on the Rice Design Alliance's annual architecture tour this month (for more information on upcoming home tours, see sidebar). Each of the eight homes included on the tour, titled "Additionally," feature large or notable additions, fundamentally altering the way the structures are used and perceived.

"The theme was a result of lot of issues that architects and builders are looking at now," said Rice Design Alliance representative Allyn West. "It's like a writer finishing someone else's short story. The contrast is stunning."